On Monday, Melanie Ewing checked the mail at her family’s home in Dover and found an envelope addressed to her daughter. When she opened it, a one-hundred dollar bill fell out onto the floor, money sent with a letter written by a 14-year-old girl who saw Melanie’s 9-year-old daughter Kamrie as a role model.

For some 9-year-olds, getting a hundred dollars in the mail from someone other than a rich relative might seem odd. For Kamrie, who has been making and selling ribbons and bookmarks for charity for nearly half a year, getting letters from strangers is becoming the norm.

Kamrie’s craft-making has been so successful that a teacher from California recently asked Kamrie to be a guest speaker for her high school humanities class, which will be conducted through a Skype video call.

“I said, ‘you realize she’s 9, right?’” Melanie said with a laugh.

“The teacher said that [Kamrie] will be the best speaker she’s ever had,” Melanie added. “And that just brought tears to my eyes.”

The charity started in July with fairly innocent beginnings — a mother trying to find a productive activity for her daughter to do over the summer to keep her busy.

“I came up with hair ribbons for her to have something to do so she wouldn’t be fighting with her brother,” Melanie said.

Melanie saw the craft as an opportunity for Kamrie to make some extra spending money over the break. But when she asked Kamrie what she would like to buy with the potential money, she got a selfless answer. She wanted to give it to an orphanage.

Melanie was so surprised by the answer that she asked Kamrie the same question again, thinking she had misunderstood. Her daughter gave her the same answer.

Melanie and her husband gave some money to Kamrie to buy some spools of thread, ribbons, and ponytails. “We really didn’t think she would sell very many, maybe a few to some family members and friends,” Melanie said.

Kamrie began selling them at her brother’s baseball games in the mid-summer heat. The job came easy to Kamrie, who her mother describes as gregariousness and friendly. The first Friday night, she sold $100 worth of hair ribbons, which she sold for $3- to $5 apiece. With such quick success, Melanie realized that they would have to find somewhere to donate the money.

While selling ribbons at the game, Kamrie learned of an 11-year-old girl who had recently been diagnosed with cancer. Kamrie had found a cause.

They set their first goal for the fundraiser at $300. Kamrie met that goal in 10 days.

They set the second goal at $500. “We thought it was unreasonable, we really did,” Melanie said.

Six weeks later, they had raised $1,000.

They gave the money to the girl’s family, and while they were pulling out of the driveway, Kamrie told her mother, “I want to do it again.”

But with the beginning of school approaching, finding time to make and sell the ribbons became more difficult. But with the help of local businesses and salons that offered to sell her ribbons, Kamrie raised another $1,000 over the course of the fall semester.

“I thought, okay, we’re done,” Melanie said after raising another $1,000. “I’m grateful and humbled to raise this money, but at the same time, I’m wondering: where is this leading? You just don’t know.”

But yet again, opportunity presented itself to the Ewing family.

While in church, the pastor mentioned an orphanage in Morrilton that the church was going to help. “If you can’t help a hundred, then help just one,” the pastor said. These ten words inspired both Melanie and her daughter.

“When he said ‘orphanage,’ I knew we weren’t done,” Melanie said. “[Kamrie] said, ‘we have to help that orphanage.’”

Wanting to branch out and do something new, Melanie remembered a letter they had gotten in the mail in July from a teacher she knew in Northwest Arkansas. The letter included a bookmark made from paper clips and ribbons.

“She said it reminded her of Kamrie,” Melanie said. “And she said that if we made these she would buy bookmarks for the whole class.”

Last week, they began a program called “Operation Bookmark Happiness” in an effort to raise $100: for $20, a person can sponsor a teacher’s class, and Kamrie would make every kid in the class a bookmark.

They didn’t just surpass their goal of five teachers, they crushed it.

In five days, over 100 teachers were sponsored, including classes from schools in Mississippi, Iowa, and California. Melanie found the proliferation of the program bittersweet: They had raised roughly $2,000 to give to the orphanage, but they also had to make over 2,500 bookmarks.

Luckily, they found help from people inspired by Kamrie’s story. 24 volunteers, both students and adults, worked for five hours over the weekend and made 2,800 bookmarks.

In the wake of the shooting in Connecticut, a teacher messaged Melanie on Facebook in hopes of sending bookmarks to the elementary school there. This started their newest idea: If people sponsor half of Sandy Hook’s 27 classes, Melanie and Kamrie will make and send bookmarks for the whole school.

After raising $4,000 to donate to charity in less than half a year, it’s safe to say that Kamrie isn’t your average 9-year-old. But the story begs the question: what makes her so selfless?

Melanie attributes the giving attitude they instilled in their children. Every year, Melanie and her husband take Kamrie and her brother to Wal-Mart to buy a toy and donate it to the Main Street Mission.

“I just try to remind [my kids] what they have and what other people don’t have,” she said.

And her parenting has paid dividends, as Kamrie has continued to inspire people throughout the community.

“Even in a recession, people are donating that I don’t know,” Melanie said. “A nurse came in whose husband isn’t working and donated $60. She said that Kamrie inspired her to help a patient.”

“Kamrie is helping people find the good within themselves,” she added.

To make a donation or help contribute, visit www.kamriescolorfulcreations.wordpress.com and click on “Make a Donation” in the righthand column.